Spring Cleaning

Posted May 6th, 2016 at 10:52 am

Hi! I’m updating this site again (and renewing my vows to post here every once in a while) after a few months of digital neglect.

I’ve now added a separate page for Supplication, which gathers a wealth of smart reviews — in Bookforum, American Poets, Jacket2, and elsewhere — plus archives some audio/video content from recent Wieners readings at City Lights Books, the SFSU Poetry Center, Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, Poets House, and the St. Mark’s Poetry Project.

Last month, I participated in a discussion on New Narrative at the University at Buffalo (see Scholarship). The paper I presented there (on the links, or lack thereof, between John Wieners and New Narrative) will be published in a special volume on New Narrative, forthcoming in 2017 from ON Contemporary Practice.

It’s a huge job to be a poet. It’s the most essential thing there is. In terms of essence, it’s very essential. Poetry is the species. I would probably emphasize the “is.” All of our perceptual equipment is geared toward seeing us as forms, as compact forms operating on many levels—that’s like a poem. That’s who we are, that’s how we see. That’s what there is, really: there’s poetry. Prose is very, very flat. But we’re not flat. We’re dense and layered.